D&D (2024) WotC Fireside Chat: Revised 2024 Player’s Handbook

In this video about the upcoming revised Player’s Handnook, WotC’s Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins reveal a few new tidbits.

• The books are near final and almost ready to go to print
• Psionic subclasses such as the Soulknife and Psi Warrior will appear in the core books
• Named spells have art depicting their creators.
• There are new species in the PHB.

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[Corinnguard]

"Egg Sculpting" to produce a Dragonborn would be a perfect example of a ritual.

The Midgard setting for PF1 had a ritual called the Rite of Draconic Ascension. It was a ritual used by the dragons of the Mharoti Empire to transform beings they deemed worthy into Dragonkin (the Midgard equivalent of the Dragonborn). The worthy subject was placed inside an 'egg' that was made of stone and dragon scales. The ritual took hours to perform, often by a dragon who would speak about draconic superiority as a part of the ritual. If the ritual was successful, the newly transformed Dragonkin would 'hatch' as a member of one of the five Dragonkin subraces (Flame, Wind, Stone, Wave or Soldier).

 

[Nikosandros]

Afraid not. It's been years since I had it in my RPG collection. @Yaarel reminded me of it when he mentioned the shapeshifted part.

It might be this Goodman product: Complete Guide to Dragonkin.

 

[Corinnguard]

It might be this Goodman product:

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

It is.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Slightly askew question, but with the new, snazzy, updated D&D5E (Not A New Edition!) coming out soon, will WotC make the old 5E (2014) core books available as purchasable PDFs on drivethrurpg to go along with all the other previous D&D editions?

 

[Kurotowa]

Slightly askew question, but with the new, snazzy, updated D&D5E (Not A New Edition!) coming out soon, will WotC make the old 5E (2014) core books available as purchasable PDFs on drivethrurpg to go along with all the other previous D&D editions?

Probably not any time soon. Even if you put aside the copy protection issue, they do not want to be selling two different versions of the 5e PHB and confusing new players. They've told stories of how bad it was when 4e had the PHB2 confusing people.

 

[Remathilis]

Slightly askew question, but with the new, snazzy, updated D&D5E (Not A New Edition!) coming out soon, will WotC make the old 5E (2014) core books available as purchasable PDFs on drivethrurpg to go along with all the other previous D&D editions?

If they do, I would expect it to be 5+ years out from now. They are going to make sure 24 is good and established.

 

[Clint_L]

Yeah, I don't see why WotC would continue to sell the 2024 version. The whole point of the exercise is to shift from the old "edition" (tm) model to training new players to just think of it as "D&D," with occasional updates and improvements, so that no one ever thinks their old stuff is immediately obsolete and maybe decides to quit, or refuses to consider new material.

In other words, they want to stop splitting their own fan base. Selling two different versions of the same game would be antithetical to that strategy.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

There are various videos online of people doing things that I would consider physically impossible. Heck, just watch an old Jackie Chan movie where he's doing all of his own stunts. Have you ever seen what Simone Biles the gymnast can do? It looks like she defies physics, it's pretty amazing.

I sometimes feel like a lot of arguments against "non-magical" classes being able to do certian things... have people failing to realize just how many amazing and unlikely things people can do and have done throughout history. In the REAL world.

On the other hand I don't expect D&D to be particularly realistic. They shoot for action movie logic unless magic is involved. As far as how much you can do in 6 seconds, I just explain that 6 seconds is an average and not to get too concerned about pulling out a stopwatch. YMMV of course.

Indeed! I like my D&D to be pretty low-magic and grounded, but I'm fine with a certain level of "movie-logic" as long as it's not too over-the-top.

What I don't want is Celtic, Greek demigod, or Paul Bunyan mythic. It's just never been the imagery supported by D&D, with the exception to a degree with 4E. I don't want to play Anime the TTRPG, I want to play D&D,

OTOH, I'm actually okay with that sort of thing happening at high-level (partly because I generally don't like to play high-level anyhow, but also because I think it could be totally appropriate there). This is why I would personally advocate for a grounded level 1-12 and a suitably epic level 13-20.

While I think that would actually go over well for most of the audience of the game, if they were clear about the design goals (and even better - made optional rules for altering that concept for people who want other things from the game). I don't expect it to happen, and I'll happily play anyhow.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Probably not any time soon. Even if you put aside the copy protection issue, they do not want to be selling two different versions of the 5e PHB and confusing new players. They've told stories of how bad it was when 4e had the PHB2 confusing people.

Probably true.

I’m in two minds about the 2024 updates, in all honesty. While it would be nice to see some tweaks - like fixing the Ranger (is that happening?) - some of the other changes (like introducing psionic fighters and rogues as core) leave me a bit cold. At the moment, because I am running other non-D&D games, I am genuinely ambivalent about whether to make an update myself.

So, it would probably swing me in favour of the 2014 editions if they released PDF copies as I like having them as resources to go with physical books. I know that there is electronic reference books at D&D Beyond, but I still prefer the independence of PDF formatting.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Since our weekly magical/martials discussion seems to be cooling off, could we talk about how they describe the artwork as integral to the rules, rather than as an add-on? According to the video, for the first time they were able to develop the art alongside the text, with the idea that they would complement each other. I am very interested to see what that looks like.

For sure. I'll be happy enough with the rules part as long as they overall feel like a basic improvement on 5e. I might have liked more than that, but it's good enough for what it is. But the layout, art integration, wording changes, font size - all the technical and non-rules stuff has me very excited to see what they've come up with.

In a lot of ways, 2014 D&D was somewhat weak in that area. Certainly the DMs Guide was a mess when it comes to layout. Generally the art was fine, but I don't think it had the integrative qualities that they're talking bout here. This could be very different, in a good way.

And I'd really love to see if they have it in mind to do an overhaul of D&D Beyond to go with it. I'd really like that.